Giveaway For Reaching 100 Subscribers on my You Tube Channel!

Woohoo! I've reached a great milestone and want to say thanks to all of you for an awesome beginning!  To celebrate, I am having a little give away. :-)   To Enter: Subscribe to my "Pecan Corner" You Tube channel, then comment on You Tube on this video (click through to watch it on You Tube, then you can see the comment box) answering this question: "What are the best kind of gifts for celebration give-a-ways from individual channels?"

Must comment on You Tube before Midnight Saturday night, January 24th 2015. Winners will be announced on Monday Jan 26th 2015. Winners must message me within 48 hours (by mid-day Wed the 28th) with their mailing address and their choice of prize. Thanks a bunch!!!

Top Prepper Websites Voting! :-)

What do you think?  Do you like my blog and my You Tube channel as good sources of preparedness info?   Please vote for me! Your vote will also take you to a list of other great sites. Thanks and please don't forget to subscribe to my You Tube channel! :-)

Christmas Recipe Challenge & Our Chex Mix Recipe

Hopefully, over the week the comments thread on this video will fill up with tasty family favorites! Do you have a You Tube channel? Make a video  and come share in the comments on You Tube!  Watch til the end to find out how to take part. Maybe your name will be drawn for the "Christmas with Martha Stewart Living" book give away! :-)

Take A Trip Outside Your Door: The Beauty of Local Day Trips

Pat Austin @ And So It Goes In Shreveport has developed a whole series of posts of one-day jaunts to nearby small towns: the "Take A Trip" series. I've written about them before, and her posts are themselves a bit of armchair travel that can help the cares of a crazy day fall away just reading them.

This week's "Take a Trip to Natchitoches and to Melrose Plantation" has a special focus on the architecture in the area: ranging from poteaux-en-terre to post-revolutionary African Congo-style construction to antebellum churches with copper roofs to sleek new design that's a pure study in the range of light and shadow.

Set aside an hour or so to immerse yourself in the images and follow her generous links to more information. Notice the surprises: how many knew the first American plantation built by and for free Black Americans was in Louisiana shortly after the Revolutionary War? That it was the home of primitive artist Clementine Hunter? Or that Natchitoches is the oldest permanent settlement in the whole Louisiana Purchase - dating back to 1714? Or that it now boasts the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame and a great independent bookstore?

In the waning years of the Baby Boomer World where so many have become "jet setters" - dashing about on holidays to exotic locations, when it comes to renewing vacations, the bluebird of Happiness is still right in our own backyard. A lovely day spent exploring the countryside around our own home can be as memorable as, and probably more meaningful to our quality of life than the All-Inclusive Here's Your Menu 4 Days 3 Nights Fantasy Cruise.

There's something renewing about walking along the corridors of our own time, the trails of our own past. As we balance on the railroad tracks of our youth and look across the graveyards of those who balanced themselves before us, there's a great opening perspective.

This is real: right here, right now. The beautiful decay of rusting sheet iron made way for the shining stars thrown by the welding torch that builds a continuing future just as bright and exciting as the past we still admire and learn from.

All we have to do is turn 180 degrees and our future waits, just one footstep further along to the horizon.

Go see it.

Best of the Week in the Blogroll

My computer was unusable for several days this week, due to some kind of ugly "hoodoo" that attacked it. Thanks (HUGE THANKS) to my husband Paul for his diligent effort in fixing it for me.

I took advantage of the enforced internet idleness brief cold snap to make up a year's worth of chili (about 15 pounds) and put into the freezer. By using our FoodSaver vacuum sealer to package it, it will keep, frozen, indefinitely. I an not an Amazon affiliate, but if you want to look on line for a vacuum sealer, stop in at SIGIS and use Pat's Amazon Search box - she'll get a small comission for the referral if one makes a purchase. It's an easy way to for us consumers to support our favorite bloggers and doesn't add to our costs. 

When Paul handed my machine back to me on Friday evening, I found it had been a rich week in the blogging world. Lots of people outdid themselves - here are a few of those:

Josh Painter (of Texas for Sarah Palin) has a new blog focused on Texas politics: Brazos Valley Pundit. In one post this week, he reported the excellent news that the Texas Senate has approved "The Ultrasound Bill" - a law that finally gives pregnant women the right of access to their own medical information by allowing them to see the ultrasound of their baby before they make a final decision to abort. The bill also "ensures that every woman has the right to speak with the abortion doctor at least 24 hours in advance about risks, complications, and alternatives, just as they would receive from a physician prior to virtually any other procedure."

Miss Fuzzy Slippers has a satirical tour-de-fource that is almost too close to possible reality for comfort. Read it and laugh: "Fuzzy's Faux News: Central Planning/Unintended Consequences Edition". This has generated a LOT of commentary. It's a brilliant post, with a long life ahead of it.  Be sure to read it!

In a story that just keeps climbing back up after being pushed off the fence, Political Junkie Mom tells us about the White House's latest attempt to "have a chilling effect" on freedom of the press.  The Obama Administration threatened Reporter Carla Marinucci and her newspaper for reporting the truth, then lied about their attempts to bully the San Francisco Chronicle ... Big events have the spotlight, but we all need to see this little tale of genuine, honest ethics by the San Francisco Chronicle's newsroom and editorial staff.

"Watts Up With That" is the best climate-science blog around. Whatever element of weather, atmosphere or climate I am interested in, there are great posts (with superior comments) about the topic. Want to understand Sun Spots? How about El Nino? Historical weather, like the middle ages' Maunder Minimum? Wattsupwiththat.com is the place to start. One of this week's posts, "Back to basics: “Green Electric” becomes “General Electric” again", spreads word of real science's ultimate triumph over pop-sci. It
seems the whole "Green" thing is just so yesterday, and the popular kids are ready to move on to something new.

Clifford at Red Stick Rant has his take on it at "Guess What Isn't Selling?".  Oh and while you are there, check out one very interesting post by a new Guest blogger "The Grey Man": "The Man Who Shot Osama Bin Laden" He proposes that this plot line is THE campaign strategy for Obama's last two years in office. It makes a lot of things make sense to know the narrative they are using as their hook....

What were women's lives like before Sharia law's body & soul-destroying tenets took hold of the Moslem countries of the Middle East? They were free, independent, and educated - virtually on a par with modern women in Western nations today. Alice @ Just Genesis has a great overview "The Status of Women in Ancient Egypt and Arabia".

And last, but oh most certainly not least, is Gagdad Bob's stream of uber-consciousness musings on the struggle "between conservative individualism and leftist collectivism" (as well as a commentary on Mr
Obama's Osama Bin Laden speech) in "Dar al-Islam and Dar al-Obama". Bob's posts are never easy but they are always accessible. This post is well  worth printing out and taking with you to read in quiet on your lunch hour. While you are there, be sure and take a look at another post from the week: "God Spends Most of His Timelessness Arranging Meetings and Marriages"....

Have a great week - and pray for Rain in Texas, please!


Photo: One of my favorite pictures of my three Mother's Day presents! :-)

Best of the Week in the Blogroll

So, while we wait to see if anyone does old-fashioned forensics on the Birth Certificate (like whether the same typewriter was used for all the "changeable" info, or asks whether there's ever been an 18 year old newlywed who signed off like that (smart question))....
here are a bunch of superior posts from this past week by some of the sanest bloggers in the country:

Pat at SIGIS (aka And So It Goes In Shreveport) has been blogging up a storm this week. She started a lively discussion with her post "Homeowners Association Demands Removal of Sign of Support for Marine (UPDATED)". What do you think of HOAs? Head on over and join the conversation - I did!
Another post from Pat that deserves a slow, thoughtful read - and that is still going to be very relevant for quite a long time - is "Would You Be Friends With This Man?"

The Reverend David Wilkerson was killed in a car accident this week. I've had his blog linked from my sidebar for quite a while, and his messages are always a trumpet blast of REAL hope: the kind of hope that saves lives, and even more: saves souls. Pastor Wilkerson's final post "When All Means Fail" is as beautiful - and timeless - as his other messages. A fitting final word from this good man whose work reached out to the hopeless, the spurned, the rejected and made a profound difference that will live on after him. His son
Gary Wilkerson has made a beautiful tribute post about Rev. Wilkerson's life and work. My sincerest condolences to his family and all of his loved ones, including his spiritual children.

 JP at Texas for Sarah Palin has the video from Governor Palin's appearance on Special Report today. Interviewed by Brett Baier, "our Sarah" came right out and told the truth: "President Obama - and I'm going to say this with all due respect to the Presidency - doesn't know what he's doing when it comes to energy" Check it out!

I've been reading "Red Stick Rant" for so long that... well, the Episcopal Church was still Christian back then. Clifford's way with words is summed up this week: "Sitting In My Blind Waiting For The Perfect Shot, And...There It Was - An 8-Point Princess." See, and believe! More seriously, he also points to "Today's Required Reading: The Case against President Obama's Health Care Reform: A Primer for Non Lawyers, Cato White Paper No. 32". Access to this kind of info is what the web is all about. Yes,
it is a long paper but if you want to really understand the issues for yourself, so you can make up your own mind with reasonable confidence, this is a good place to start.

John Hawks Weblog is a simply marvelous and trustworthy source for the latest on Neanderthal research, "paleoanthropology, genetics, and evolution". One recent post highlights the degree to which the lack of genuine transparency via access to raw data is interfering with even paleo science: "Opening up paleontology". He notes, correctly, that there's a lot of talk, but precious little progress. And, if you are a history buff, he reminds us that congressional-mandated "Open Government" didn't start with the Obama
administration, but with President Clinton....

Political Junkie Mom is a recent addition to my blogroll and she does a great job picking up on the stories of the day. One of her posts this week excerpts a particularly outrageous opinion statement made in, of all places, Parade Magazine - not usually noted for controversy or cutting edge expose. PjMom makes the essential point that NO YOU CANNOT in her post "Michelle and Jill: We heart the troops and families even though we hate what they do!"

Alice Linsley is an amazing person, and Just Genesis covers her intense, ground-breaking anthropological analysis of the Book of Genesis. Her work is opening up new areas of research into the history of mankind as it really happened, without following the same old agenda-rutted tracks. An intriguing post coming out of Holy Week asks "Why Prejudice Against a Scientific Approach to the Bible?"  Why indeed? Much to think about, and a conversation opener that invites your own opinions.

And that's a wrap for this week. Have a great weekend - and keep praying that Texas will get more rain! We had sporatic rain in various places last weekend, but not enough and not everywhere that desperately needs it. So here's to more rain! :-)

If You Love Paris

Erin Elizabeth, of the blog My Heart Belongs To Me (link from the sidebar as well), recently traveled to France with her sister Neile. Her posts overflow with memorable photos of Paris - can you smell the rain on the avenue, the clementines in the market, the flowers on the vendor's corner, the sugar from the treat shop window?

The "love locks" along the Seine made my heart melt. What a romantic little memento to leave along the way in a love story!

From mossy tombs to modern museums, from french fashion to fresh design, from morning of the day to the lively night, Erin's posts make for a lovely armchair afternoon in the city of light.

we’ll always have paris

paris. day 1.

paris. day 2.

paris. day 3.

paris. day 4.

paris. day 5.

paris. day 6.

Why Sarah Palin Makes Us Proud: Gumption

February is Sarah Palin Month, and a good time for blogging about this remarkable American. Another good source of regular news for Sarah's supporters is Texans 4 Palin, which I've been reading for a while and added to my blog list on the sidebar.


No one "embraces change" with the legitimacy that Sarah Palin does. Her history is of a woman who makes deliberate decisions that fit the needs of the future.

She is not shackled to yesterday's best plan, she's attentive to new information and is not surprised by the unexpected.

"The next campaign" is not her mindset. She neither runs nor holds office for her ego - she has been a candidate only at those places and times that running for office made sense as a movement toward repairing something broken. Her history proves her integrity: she stays always focused on making things right.

So when, as Ethics Commissioner of the Alaska Oil & Gas Conservation Commission, she found that it was not sufficient to combat unethical behavior within the industry when questionable activities and ethical disinterest were rampant among the Republican party leadership, she did the ethical thing: she first resigned, and announced why. Then she filed good-faith complaints against those who were engaged in shady dealings.

And the minute she determined that the most fixable "brokenness" in the Alaska Governorship was the incessant filing of frivolous complaints against her in effort to push her off of the public stage, she elegantly and simply fixed two problems at once by doing the smart thing.

Just the way the Roadrunner would take a simple step to the right at the very last minute, and watch in bemusement as Wyl E. Coyote jumped right off the cliff.

The political class twittered that her resignation would be the "end of her career". They had no clue what her career was.

It wasn't - and isn't - "being a politician".

The media wanted to censor her, ridicule her, play her for a chump. From the White House Press Corps to JournoList, they bent their ethics to try to keep their "access".

She took a simple step to the right and made a Facebook page. Suddenly even the President was spending time explaining why he wasn't going to take advice from Sarah Palin.

There's access - and there's access.

Sarah Palin has the kind of access every ordinary American is born with. That's why she terrifies the Progressives. She's untouchable, and she is proof the species is not only not extinct, but is alive and thriving. A species of American that thrives without slogans, without marketing campaigns, and without "thought leaders".

A person whose self is whole and inviolable. Who can't be manipulated. Who doesn't seek favor from those who set her up for a fall and who then are angry that she's unaware of their ridicule. And she wouldn't be interested even if she were.

Sarah Palin's interest is not in "Being First Woman President". Her interest is in fixing a broken government. And she will never have to throw her hat into the ring again to do that. I hope she will - but she will only do so when it makes sense from inside her own home and her own head and her own heart as the surest means of fixing the broken stuff she's interested in fixing.

That's real integrity. That's real leadership. That's plain old American gumption.

And that's one reason why Sarah Palin is a Great American.


....

Photo: "Sarah in Pink Jacket at Villages Book Signing" from The Sarah Palin Information Blog Photo Gallery

...And Pat Austin Blows It All Away

Leave it to an English teacher to show us how to use metaphor and simile properly. Pat leads by example and gives a good humored way to let the wind out of the " 'double barrel'effort of the left to paint every phrase and nuance as a cue to some nut job extremist or as a sign that Republicans are crazed gun toters "

Pat's latest post at "And So It Goes in Shreveport" is titled "Shooting from the Hip" and she lines up her targets and knocks 'em all down with the pragmatism only a high school teacher by choice can bring to the shooting match.

Great aim!

Thank you!

Thanks to Pat for the link at And So It Goes in Shreveport. Her weekly "Full Metal Jacket Reach Around" is always a good wrap up of interesting posts, and I appreciate being included. :-)

Thanks also to Clifford at Red Stick Rant for the link on his sidebar. Much appreciated.

Both of these fine blogs, and many others well worth reading for diverse subjects, have permanent links in Pecan Corner's sidebar under "My Blog List", which is where I keep those I read daily. Enjoy!

Photos from the Wedding of the Year (and Meet the Photographer)

Leah Muse, the photographer for Nick and Lani's wedding, has a wonderful blog post up at her blog "The Life You Love" about the event. Check it out for gorgeous photos from start to finish!

Try to remember when life was so tender....

And now for something completely different: the Wedding of the Year gets closer by the minute. Erin Elizabeth has blogged about Lani's Bachelorette Party! They had cupcakes, natch, found a clever way to display her gifts as she unwrapped them, and all the girls look like princesses.

Lani says everything is done, just waiting on delivery of some things that were ordered. It will be a lovely wedding, and a happy marriage. She and Nick are well-suited for each other. They will have a good life.

Erin Elizabeth's blog "my heart belongs to me" is great - if you read here for the fun stuff, decorating, hometown travel, food and such, if you (heart) cupcakes, and if you love beautiful photos of home with sweet and sentimental notes to wrap up a day with a peaceful evening, you need to click over to her blog. Such a happy corner of the net - and superb photos of the family's lovely cats nearly always make their way into a post.

One recent post especially I've been meaning to point to is Erin's stroll along South Congress Avenue in Austin, or "SoCo" as she puts it. These pictures really do capture the feeling - it's such a witty and whimsical district to shop! I love the antique shops there - but there's also a store fully dedicated to monkeys! Not real monkeys - pretend monkeys :-)

Go visit, and have fun!


~


Title is a line from the old song " Try to Remember (the Kind of September)", written by - I was surprised to learn - Tom Jones!

Pirates Talk, Pirates Walk, Pirates Have A Party

If whereever you turn, you hear people blurting out Spanish Main kinds of things like "Avast!" and "Aaaaarrggggghh", can International Talk Like A Pirate Day be far away? Time to start drawing the map - it's already August & September 19th will be blowing in on a fair wind before we know it.

Mom in High Heels has some very cute ideas for a pirate themed party, with games for little ones and a whole menu that would be a hoot even if the pirates are getting a little long in the tooth! There's a fabulous cake, and my favorite was this watermelon shark (photo above, with Mrs HH's kind permission). See the whole thing on her blog (and don't miss their trip to LegoLand while you are there).

Only 48 days to go. Better start trying to find some of those nifty Skull goblets!

~

What else happened on September 19th? Oh yeah - the Continental Congress passed the first Budget of the United States. As they've done every year since. Oh. Wait.

Catching Up With Some Great Blogs I Love To Read

~

If there's a theme in the blogs I follow most, it's that their owners tend to use stream of consciousness when choosing topics. They are never bored and never boring. Here's a small sample :-)

"Through The Eyes Of A Gold Star Mom" is the amazing, hope-and-love-filled story of Amy Galvez, whose son died for Freedom in Iraq. Marine Cpl Adam Galvez served in Iraq with Ethan, and I've written of him before.

Amy's latest post says "It's My Turn to Make Adam Proud". She and 3 other Gold Star mothers have been invited by the organization FUTURE to go to Baghdad and Northern Iraq this autumn on a joint humanitarian mission with Iraqi women, preparing a structure to assure the defenseless are not abandoned and can still look forward to a joyful future when our troops are
no longer there to protect them.

~

Mom in High Heels is playing "Random Thoughts Tuesday" (ok fine, she WAS playing it two days ago when I wrote this sentence) and she cracked me up by singing "There's a hole in the bottom of the sea" (and yes we do feel guilty and sincerely apologize to all our friends along the Gulf who know it isn't funny yet, we are very sorry but we could not help ourselfs).... ~ there's a flea on the hair on the wart on the frog on the knot on the log ~

~

I was wondering the other day whether schools still use SRA, when a favorite blogger, Leslie aka Alice the Camel (she's quoted on my sidebar), who's been on hiatus for forEVER announced a new blog she's doing: "Public Education 1010". The blog is frank and wry and challenging. Prepare to think when you read there.

Anyway, the first post I read was on "Uncreative reading", showing how Reading Mastery (of which SRA is a component) is still proving wildly effective.

I LOVED SRA when I was in grade school. I would work so hard to finish early enough to get to go to the SRA station. Even for a good reader like me it was useful. The best part of it was that all the different levels were in there so everyone in class could use the same full set, we just
used different pieces of the array.

~

I've been a fan of "Dr Mabuse's" The Kraalspace blog for years now. She's a hoot, and bakes a prize-winning apple pie. Her latest post "Reciprocity", announces that for the second time in 2 years, the President and Prime Minister exchanged gifts.

Our President's naive staff finally got taken in hand by someone somewhere with sense and gave new British PM David Cameron a proper state gift of a painting by the historically important and highly respected American artist Ed Ruscha, a father of Pop Art, who pioneered iconic typographical art and produced this sixty years ago. His work sells for Million$.

The British, on the other hand, ever mindful of nuance, with a finely tuned sense of history and attention to detail, achieved true antithesis when Mr Cameron presented the Obamas with a painting by "Ben Eine, a relatively unknown south London graffiti artist who has three convictions for criminal damage..."

And she subtitles it ... well, you gotta go see. I'm still laughing.

~

And last but not least, Pat over at And so It Goes In Shreveport is bravely blogging along, keeping her chin up, despite her mom being in the hospital demanding cigarettes and Better Crossword Puzzles. Well, she did break down and drown her sorrows in butter and grits and bacon and diet Coke, but she's back with news of The Awesome Bobby Jindal, and of another, non-metaphorical, storm a'comin'.

Oh, and go to your store and plead for Gulf Shrimp - she says the shrimp haven't been affected so we can feast AND do Good For The Gulf at the same time! Remember: Friends Don't Let Friends Eat Imported Shrimp!

PS I'll post the recipe for the Mexicanish Shrimp Cocktail tomorrow. :-)

What's in Our Refrigerators?

Pat over at And So It Goes In Shreveport picked up on Ann Althouse's post and is inviting the public display of what's inside our refrigerators. Ha! Great meme for those of us in Texas who didn't let the Appliance Stimulus Package * entice us to exchange perfectly good and well made ice boxes for shiny new ones. :-)

It's fun how interesting the mundane things of our lives can be, isn't it?


*whispering* I'm not sure where the 87,000 new jobs are supposed to be created, because when we bought our new freezer last year, we shopped several places looking at major brands and learned that only Frigidaire still makes refrigerators in the US (and that from foreign made parts) - most appliances of all types are manufactured abroad...

Anyway, here's our fridge - complete with the boxes of Brie I found on sale! Like Pat, we also are blessed to have a freezer full of good food.

Are you brave enough to show off your cooler? Go on over and join the blog party!

Seven Quick Takes: British Mystery: BBC America, PBS and Netflix

- Does anyone else love the Foyle's War series, available through Netflix? Am I the only one who always thinks of the young Queen-to-be Elizabeth when his driver is on screen? What great casting, good acting, and fine stories, all around wonderful production. The BBC at its best.

- Who is watching BBC America these days? They seem to have discontinued every show that would be remotely interesting to fans of British TV. I get more interestng British programming on RFD Channel. Who hasn't seen all the reruns of How Clean is Your House and Gordon Ramsey's Restaurant Makeovers (the old ones that didn't require a bleep every third word) a dozen times? Top Gear is fun, but it still doesn't keep me on the BBCA for more than an hour a week.

- If you liked Inspector Morse, you will probably really enjoy Inspector Lewis. Lewis is as good as ever, and his seargent is as well cast for him as Lewis was for Morse. Aired on PBS Mystery in August, but also available from Netflix.

- Another new favorite is The Last Detective, a classic underappreciated brilliant detective and other quirky characters starring the guy who played Tristam in the old All Creatures Great and Small series.

- We switched satellite providers and have a PBS channel for the first time in years. Sure is nice to have Masterpiece Theater again, even if they are sporatic about it. I'm enjoying getting to see Nova again too.

- I can't get enough of 1940s House, and have rented it again and again from Netflix. It puts the rest of the "Period House" series to shame (Although Manor House was reasonably true to intention, and there was at least minor privation in Frontier House).

If this sounds like I watch a lot of tv, it's more that I watch in spurts, and I multitask while it is on. Nothing sets up a mood for accomplishment like British accents in the background. :-)

I've been meaning to join in Conversion Diary's "7 Quick Takes Friday" for ages. It's always interesting, and lots of great participants!

Update: I've since discovered even more fabulous British TV and British Mysteries, and posted about them here.

Dear So and So

Dear So and So

~~~~~~~~~~

Dear Winter,

I don't believe in anthropoginobldygoop global warming, but this year, Winter, you are making me wish I did.

Time to go, Winter, and let Spring come. Please.

We might long for you again in the sweltering Summer if you go on now.

Pretty please?

Signed: Hates The Cold

~~~~~~~~~

I found "Dear So and So" over at Mom In High Heels, always fun. To take part, check out Kat's blog at 3 Bedroom Bungalow - a new find. Thanks to both for fun blogs that let us share their adventures!